Imbrium Immortalis
by Empatheia
Summary: [Fujicest] Of rain that falls forever.


**A/N:** Okay. This story has a story of its own. I had a dream about two and half months ago, maybe more, that basically played out this story in its entirety. Since I rarely dream that coherently, it stuck with me. I told my dear friend **Numisma** about it, and she told me I should definitely write it because it sounded squeeful.

So I eventually got around to writing it... and it turned out so viciously angsty and tragic that I cried while writing it. Which was not quite what I'd had in mind for my present for her, so I'm going to write another story with these characters eventually with FLUFF and BUNNIES.

This story, however, just wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it, so... here it is. Enjoy. 

**xoxox**

_Imbrium Immortalis_

xoxox

_Of rain that falls forever._

It has been four days, seven hours and forty-three minutes since the world fell apart.

"Isn't it wonderful?" Yumiko had said, in a voice like brittle, badly-blown glass. Her marble eyes were wide and dry. "They'll let us stay together! I'll take good care of you two, I promise."

Yuuta, always the one to wear his emotions outwardly like the insignia on his tennis jersey, had been the one to rant and weep and viciously throw things on behalf of all three of them.

Syuusuke's smile never left his face, even after the policeman left.

An accident, they were told by the awkward, sallow man standing on their doorstep. Four-thirty on a perfect September afternoon, and no one at fault. Simply a terrible accident, a _coincidence_ that sent the both of them hurtling off the road to fly-- for a brief, transcendent moment-- before the inevitable scream of crumpling metal and dying voices. No one to blame... just a stupid, unavoidable accident.

And then there were three.

They lie in their beds, silent and sleepless as they have been since the Accident. The funeral had been the day before-- a small, strange affair to suit the way they had lived. They would have hated a maudlin, drawn out thing like tradition demanded, and Yumiko was not good at following set patterns anyway.

Now, Fuji Syuusuke counts the spines of his cacti one by one, writes down the totals, and erases them. Then he counts them again, and erases them again, over and over and over again, until the stars are diamond-sharp in the sky against the orange city-glare. It is three thirty-seven in the dead of morning, and he is breaking at last. The chair scrapes quietly against the wooden floor as he stands, and then silence.

His footfalls make no sound as he walks through the house. He touches everything he passes.

Yumiko's car is gone. Syuusuke's smile widens ever so slightly. So she is dealing with her grief the best (and _only_) way she knows how-- cheap wine and cheaper men, both gone by sunrise. That was good. She would be fine.

Yuuta is no longer choking on his sobs beneath his covers, doubtless forced to silence by the scourged rawness of his twisted throat. That was also good. The pain of his bleeding flesh would help to cleanse the festering pain in his heart. He would be fine, eventually.

Syuusuke has no wine, no lovers, and fewer tears. He wanders the house as though searching for ghosts-- and perhaps he is-- but he does not find them in his mother's favourite celadon tea set. Nor are they hiding in his father's office sanctuary among the tidy stacks of figures and formulas and politely-worded death threats.

So he goes to their bedroom next, and touches the little sculptures lined across the shelves one by one. There is a fine layer of dust already collecting. When he runs his fingers over the off-white walls, he can almost but not quite hear the echoes of laughter imprinted on them, so he imagines them instead and clings to the tenacious smile on his face.

Next, when he lies down on their bed and turns over to press his thin face into the pillows, he can smell his mother's favourite freesia soap, and the unique smokey scent of charred paper that he would know as his father's blindfolded ten years down the road.

He comes very close to shattering, then, but instead he stands and goes back to his bedroom.

It is almost beyond his tired strength to lift his mattress, but he manages it and takes his prizes-- photo albums, four of them, bound in black leather with embossed golden letters on the spines-- to the living room, where he calmly sits down next to the window and sets about tearing his heart into shrieking ribbons. 

_(click)_

_Mother and Father in the kitchen. Mother gleefully emptying a cupful of fine white flour over Father's outraged head. Yumiko hides under the table nearby, fifteen but still playful enough not to mind getting her knees dirty. Father's suit is ruined, but he is smiling._

_(click)_

_Father, two am on a Friday night, hunched over his desk with a pen spinning endlessly between his fingers. The lamp casts only a small, harsh circle of light over the sprawled papers. The overall effect is that of an old monochrome frame, but with keener edges and darker shadows._

_(click)_

_Mother in the garden, early morning in May. The sun sidles through the slats of the fence to glare across her white hands, which are knuckle-deep in mud and roots. She does not know Syuusuke is there, and she is smiling a little as she sings to herself._

He knows the song, and hums it to himself as he turns the page over.

_(click)_

_Both of them, sharing a rare moment of affection alone. They sit very cloes to each other at the table, and Mother holds out a crumbling morsel of plum cake to his startled lips. There is no one else in the room, and his eyes are unguarded and fathomless as he looks at his wife. _

Syuusuke knows the cake will lie in forgotten scattered crumbs on the floor in mere moments, but the tension was still intact when his finger hit the button.

_(click)_

_He has figured out the time-delay function, and so all five of them are in this one. Father and Mother have their arms around each other and their free hands on Yumiko's shoulders. Syuusuke, laughing and off-balance, drapes himself over a frowning Yuuta and slips a hand, unnoticed, down the front of his shirt to rest against his collarbone. By the looks of it, it is still summer, if only by its fingernails._

(whirr)

But now, he is sitting in the bleeding moonlight on his cold living room floor, and at last there are tears streaking down his cheeks, and his smile is finally, finally gone.

"Aniki," says Yuuta, startling Syuusuke out of his grief-ridden reverie. He stands in the doorway to the living room, in ragged blue sweatpants with no shirt. His eyes are grey-haggard like an old man's, in direct contrast with the smooth, unspoiled planes of his chest.

Syuusuke raises his head to look at him, and realizes immediately how truly destroyed he is. His smile is dead, his eyes pried wide open by unwilling tears, and though he opens his mouth, he cannot think of a single clever thing to say.

Instead, he carefully lays down the photo album, stands, and walks over to Yuuta. His younger brother says nothing as he approaches, and continues to say nothing as Syuusuke reaches up to curl his fingers behind his head. More blessed nothing is said when Syuusuke pulls his head down the last few inches to press his lips against the cross-shaped scar on the right side of Yuuta's forehead.

Then Yuuta makes a low sound and crushes Syuusuke to his chest, face buried in the crook of his neck and arms shaking. Syuusuke knows how much this display of weakness is costing him, and so he holds Yuuta back with as much of his strength as he can muster. Yuuta is younger, yes, but taller and bigger and stronger. It still feels backwards for him to comfort Syuusuke. It has always been the other way around.

It takes ten-point-five seconds for Syuusuke to break the rest of the way. His knees, tennis-strong but incapable of bearing up under _this_, buckle, and Yuuta catches him effortlessly. They slide to the floor together. Syuusuke, undone as he has not been in all his living memory, throws his arms around Yuuta's neck and holds as tightly as he can, as though terrified that Yuuta will somehow vanish too.

Yuuta clutches him with the selfsame terror inherent in his powerful, digging fingers. Syuusuke's breath is condensing and cooling on Yuuta's chest, but he does not seem to notice the chill. The fingers of his right hand are tangled in Syuusuke's hair, and his left is curled protectively around his waist.

It is not quite comfortable, but neither of them can bear to move for another fifty-six minutes.

xxxx

When they finally do, it is only to drag themselves to Yuuta's room and curl up together under the thin blankets. The house outside the covers is unbearably cold in some way that has nothing to do with temperature, but they are warm with each other.

Yuuta does not protest when Syuusuke's hands begin to wander restlessly over his skin-- after all, his own hands are making journeys as well, searching for the easing of pain in the pale moors of his brother's back.

xxxx

They hear Yumiko stagger in just shy of sunrise, but know better than to get up and greet her. She would not welcome their compassion, and anyway, they are so entwined with each other by now and so comforted by it that it is unthinkable to disentangle themselves until sunlight chases the ghosts away. Sleep only then comes for them, and even so it is more a hypnotic slipping in and out of crimson-tangerine dreamscapes.

xxxx

Morning comes in earnest some time later, a grey streaming of light through Yuuta's cloud-blue curtains, and still they do not move. Their skin has adhered to one another's with night sweat and long contact, and Syuusuke's hair is a mess of swallow-brown splayed across Yuuta's chest. Neither of them are hungry.

xxxx

Some time in the afternoon, they rouse themselves at last like statues who have slept for hundres of years, creaking and clumsy with disuse.

Yumiko looks up hopefully and half-stands with the obvious intention of making breakfast.

They walk straight past her with only a tired smile to ease her worry before sliding the door open to the back yard.

Their rackets are not in the best shape after being neglected for nearly a week, but this match isn't about winning, losing, or technical perfection. It is a way for them to drag their grief out into the afternoon sunlight and decisively crush it with a brilliantly swung Tsubame Gaeshi or twist-spin shot.

Yumiko watches from the window and almost understands... but not quite. Tennis is their sake, she thinks, but that isn't quite right-- it is only a parallel to what she knows, and not a particularly accurate one at that. What tennis is to them is something she will never understand without holding the racket herself, and probably not even then.

Syuusuke and Yuuta slaughter their pain in the clean bright air of a late September afternoon.

xxxx

When the match ends, it is because they are hungry, not because of the score. They had lost count of that a long time ago.

It is then that they wonderingly discover the smiles on their faces and the easing of their knotted muscles, and realize that they've won. The grief lies beated and rueful in the dirt. Neither of them look back at it.

They spend the rest of the day on the couch, flipping through the photo albums and laughing. There are no daggers for them there, not anymore.

xxxxx

That night, Syuusuke's bed goes untouched. Yumiko, when she thinks to check, finds him entwined with Yuuta on his narrow twin-size. He is smiling faintly in his dreams while Yuuta snores softly into his hair.

She smiles, a true, fathomless Fuji smile, and closes the door behind her. 

**XoxoxoxoX**

**A/N:** ...SOB


End file.
